The Saharan project, with capital costs estimated at $10bn for the pipeline and $3bn for the gathering centres, would send up to 30bn cum’/yr o gas to Europe via a 4,128-km long pipeline from Nigeria, via Niger and Algeria, starting in 2015. The European Union’s Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs is understood to have welcomed the venture as being in the interests of European energy security and the environment and of Africa’s development. Mr Piebalgs has also said the EU might help finance it.

The project is looking for support from European governments and gas consumers, which are concerned about falling domestic supplies and reliance on gas piped in from Russia. Russian gas monopoly Gazprom said last year it was holding preliminary talks with Nigeria about participating in the venture. The gas would cross the Mediterranean via the growing network of pipelines that now takes Algeria’s gas to increasingly gas-dependent customers in Europe.